


Slowly Falling

by Lire_Casander



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-06
Updated: 2013-09-06
Packaged: 2017-12-25 19:23:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/956757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lire_Casander/pseuds/Lire_Casander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On Christmas Eve, Ron finds out the truth about his feelings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slowly Falling

**Author's Note:**

> The lyrics come from Backstreet Boys song "How Did I Fall In Love With You." I do not own either the lyrics or the group.

_Remember when we never needed each other_   
_The best of friends like sister and brother_   
_We understood we'd never be alone_

The photos moved in front of him. Images of his whole life in Hogwarts, pictures of an existence he had considered happy. In all of them, from the beginning, a curly, bushy head followed after him in each image, like in his dreams.

He remembered when things were easier, though they never had been. When defeating Voldemort – he scolded himself for flinching at the sound of that name – only depended on a chess move, on a choice of bottle, on nailing a fang in a journal. When their problems were solved with a graceful movement of Hermione's wand over his Potions essay.

Hermione.

In the beginning they hadn't been friends, but little by little all their worlds had converged in one, around a boy with a scar on his forehead, against a common enemy. With time, he had learned to love her like a sister, like the best friend he never had until he left the house where he had grown up surrounded by redhaired brothers.

Meeting her had changed him completely.

To know that he would never be alone again comforted him – that it didn't matter the time or the distance, she would always travel halfway around the world to be with him.

If they both survived this madness, this innocents' slaughter, he determined to make her understand how important she was.

_Those days are gone, and I want you so much_   
_The night is long and I need your touch_   
_Don't know what to say, I never meant to feel this way_   
_Don't want to be alone tonight_

The fire crackled in the living room of The Burrow, but he wasn't really paying attention to it. He wasn't even sure why he was there to begin with. There was no longer any safe place in the Wizarding World – nor any in the Muggle World. He only knew that he needed Hermione to help him remember why he kept on fighting even though he no longer had the strength.

When all that started, his life seemed so simple. In light of everything he had lived through the last years, having to put up with Hermione Granger's growls about how horrible his snores were while they attended History of Magic was an easy task, although he had then protested. But they were no longer children, no matter how much it hurt him to think so. They were adults – but adults scared of the night in which their lives would be decided with a simple movement of wrist and a green beam.

He had found it useful to know how to stop listening when a speech was longer than was polite. Years of experience with her had allowed him to take the really important things from the long and pompous harangues about Voldemort – really, he'd have to try to control his reactions before that name.

He looked around him, verifying that he was still alone. It wasn't strange that he was alone, though – it was early morning on Christmas Eve, and everyone was sleeping. Or pretending they slept. War didn't understand the meaning of holidays or celebrations – only of blood and pain, of fear and silences.

The last photo of his collection shone in his right hand. He observed it with a sad smile. It had been taken months before, when Hermione and he had decided to return to Hogwarts to make the school the last bastion of the light. They were both in the picture, standing next to each other, she was smiling at the camera and he was looking at her intently, as if he didn’t want to blink for fear she would disappear.

Hermione was his mirage, and he refused to stop looking at her, afraid the she'd vanish between his fingers as the sand escapes from a broken hourglass.

He caressed the magical surface with his fingertips, wondering how she was doing in France, where she had gone to spend Christmas with her parents. The last holidays, she had said. Everyone knew that, for better or for worse, the war would finish before they had predicted.

He wanted to spend the rest of his holidays, the rest of his days, with Hermione. With her disobedient curls escaping from her bun during a party, with her shining eyes locked with his, with her strong personality challenging him to improve.

Then the truth struck him completely.

_What can I do, to make you mine,_   
_falling so hard so fast this time._   
_What did I say, what did you do?_   
_How did I fall in love with you?_

He fancied Hermione. He had fallen all the way down. For his best friend. For the know-it-all of their year. For the most incredible witch of their generation, and probably of the Wizarding World. For the light in the middle of the storm his life had become.

He didn't have any idea as to how it had happened, but it had happened. And suddenly everything fit: his reaction towards Viktor Krum had been jealousy; his need to kiss her every time she made Malfoy shut up – these weren't the normal reactions of a friend.

He shook his head. _Forget it_ , he told himself. _Forget it at once. You're only friends, and that's how it must be. Be content with what you already have_.

The room had become cold suddenly, he noticed. He stood up to shake off the dream and desperation pressing on him, and decided that going out to watch the stars wasn't a bad idea.

With a simple spell he gathered all the photos in a box – each and every of them – except one. He grazed his calloused fingers over Hermione's lips – she was smiling happily at him.

They had been through a lot together, they had argued and they had patched things up, they had fought against each other and in the end they had broken off the battle to join forces. It was normal that he felt something more for her – more than friendship.

He loved her like a sister. He shouldn't confuse his feelings, ever.

He opened the door and stepped out onto the porch. It was cold outside, but he didn't feel it in his cheeks when the wind brushed his face. He was too focused to keep his feelings at bay.

"Ron?"

_I hear your voice and I start to tremble_   
_Brings back the child that I resemble_   
_I cannot pretend that we can still be friends_   
_Don't want to be alone tonight_

He was starting to hallucinate. To hear voices that could only exist in his head – to hear her voice. He refused to turn around, knowing that the disappointment would lead him to fury before a hollow emptiness and the certainty that he was losing his head.

"Ron? What are you doing here, outside?" A hand settled on his shoulder, and it was definitely not ethereal. "Ron, are you going to answer me?"

He turned around slowly, waiting for the mirage to come undone, but when he opened his eyes again she was there, watching him. _Merlin help me, I'd do anything for her when she looks at me like that_.

"I think you could answer that question too," he said calmly, though he was nervous. "Shouldn't you be in France?"

She shrugged. "I didn't want to spend Christmas far from all this."

"Far from the war?" he asked astonished, his wall crumbling with each word.

"No," she contradicted. "From The Burrow, from Hogwarts. From your family, from Harry... from you."

The smile with which she pronounced those last words melted Ron's last defenses – the denial of what he felt for her, the fear of rejection, the pain of almost certain loss.

"I wanted to look at the stars."

"At this time?"

"I'm not the one who traveled from France up here in the middle of the night. For how long are you going to stay?"

"Not too long." Hermione shook, feeling the cold. "I must go back before dawn or my parents will get _very_ upset. They don't know that I'm gone."

He couldn't disguise how his eyes opened wide at that confession – Hermione was well-known for almost never breaking the established order.

"Are you cold?" he asked, as she shivered from top to bottom. "Do you want me to bring a blanket or something?"

Hermione nodded, and Ron took his wand out of the back pocket of his trousers. He aimed it at the still open door and whispered "Accio blanket." The smooth and spongy fabric that arrived fell in his hands with an almost inaudible thud. He waved to Hermione so she approached, and he wrapped the blanket around her.

It was golden and red, Gryffindor colors interlaced in stripes of warm material that slipped between his fingers like silk. Hermione shook her head while sitting on the last step of the stairs. "It's big enough for both," she emphasized. "Why don't you sit by my side and we’ll look at the stars together, like when we were kids?"

Ron began to contradict her, but he thought twice about it and obeyed, carefully sitting next to Hermione. "We are no longer children, Hermione, and certainly the world is not the safe place they made us believe. Just tell me, why have you come, really?"

"I didn't want---–" she stumbled upon her own words – the question had caught her by surprise. "I didn't want to spend this night alone."

Ron threw an arm over his friend's shoulders – the person who occupied that hidden place of his heart – and tightened his grip lovingly.

"You're not alone anymore, Hermione."

_I want to say this right and it has to be tonight_   
_Just need you to know_   
_I don't want to live this life_   
_I don't want to say goodbye_   
_With you I wanna spend the rest of my life_

It was nice to be like that, sitting – their shoulders and their legs close – with the blanket on their knees and stars over their heads. Ron thought that Heaven wouldn't be very different – perhaps only warmer.

They sat in silence a good while, the brightness of the stars extinguishing any light that was not reflected in the eyes fixed on a sky that had seen too much during its long existence – too many broken hearts throughout the eras.

"Tonight would be perfect if we had a good hot chocolate," Hermione said. "It would be like being in the common room again, back to the old times. I miss that nothing-to-care-about sensation."

Ron whispered some words again, and two steaming mugs of chocolate appeared in his hands. He offered one to Hermione, and at the sight of her inquisitve arched eyebrow, he smiled a little. "An old trick learned from necessity. Living in a house with eight people means that sometimes you must conjure your breakfast."

Hermione agreed and took the cup. She gulped the liquid and immediately she set the cup on the step. "It burns," she protested, sticker her tongue out. Ron trembled when he saw the pink appendage peaking from those perfect lips – it took all of his self-control to keep himself from leaning in and kissing her at that very moment. Instead of that, he pulled her against his chest; Hermione let him, placing her hands around Ron's waist and her head on his chest.

"I feel so at ease here," she said. "Looking at the stars, with you."

"That's because I keep the heat," he retorted half-playfully, tugging of the edge of the blanket, pulling it below Hermione's chin.

"Being here makes me forget about the whole world," she confessed. "It makes me think I have a right to a normal life, far from the horror of this war."

Ron remained speechless, completely dumb.

"Sometimes I wonder if this is really what I want," she continued. "Don't get me wrong. By all means, I want this war to end. But--- I don't know, sometimes I feel I haven't chosen it, that it has been forced on me – I don't know. It's strange. But what I know clearly is that I don't want to spend the rest of my life this way."

"The war will finish before you can say 'Wingardium Leviosa,' you'll see. And once we've won we will be able to come back to our former lives."

"And if we don't win?"

She had raised her head and was watching him, eyes full of salty tears. He couldn't stand seeing her defenseless – Hermione was the vital support of the Order. The one who never crumbled, who never broke down.

"We'll win."

"But---"

"I'm scared too," he continued, not letting her interrupt him. "I'm scared that, whenever we part ways to go on a mission, it will be the last goodbye I ever get to say to you. That the last thing you'd hear from my lips would be a simple and bland 'Goodbye,' when I'd want to tell you so many other things..."

“For example?"

Her whisper startled him, in spite of the volume. He supposed that, if she had traveled all the way from France, she deserved some answers at least. But he wasn't sure that he had enough courage to answer all her questions.

"For example, that tonight is a wonderful night, but the brightness of the stars can't compete with the one in your eyes," he whispered back, not looking at her in the eye, a blush covering his freckles.

"Really?"

Ron nodded slightly. Again, he was watching those brown eyes so full of life, and again he was drowning.

"Beautiful. Thank you very much, Ron. I see that you've learned how to treat girls," she retorted ironically. "I guess Lavender taught you much more that what's obvious."

"What's obvious?" Ron wagged his head. "Lavender didn't teach me anything that I didn't know. Like, for example," he kept on, "that I could never fall for her."

"And why's that?"

There was pure curiosity in that question, but he could feel a hint of hope that made him tremble. He decided to go for it and speak his mind. The war could destroy all his dreams, even his own life, but nobody would steal that night and what he could do with it.

"I'm in love with another woman, Hermione. Though I think I should thank Lavender for helping me understand."

"Do I--- do I know her?" Suddenly Hermione's voice had become sad.

"Mhm, yeah."

"Is she--- is she older than us?"

He smiled, finally understanding where Hermione's thoughts were leading her – Fleur. She was as transparent as water sometimes.

"Yes, she's older than me," he smiled again. "But only five months."

"Oh."

He couldn't help shaking his head at Hermione's confusion. He felt brave and bold all of a sudden, so he thought that one last movement could do nothing more than good for his current situation.

"I've been in love with her for a long time, so much that it seems to be my whole life. And, in some way, it's true. And I'd have to tell her before it's too late, before this life we're living destroys us somehow."

He slipped a finger under her chin and lifted her head so she could look him in the eyes. He breathed in slowly and let the air go out, trying to find the perfect words – and failing spectacularly.

He decided on the traditional words.

"I love you, Hermione."

He saw recognition in her, joy lighting her features at the same time that a flush covered her face, a shining smile on her lips.

"I--- love you, Hermione. I don't know when it happened, or how. I don't even know – I mean, you are my best friend, and it's supposed to---I can't---"

Her fingers cut his breathing when they settled on his lips to keep him from speaking.

"Shhh," she hushed. "Don't talk anymore, Ron. You... you had me at 'hello'."

He tried to get rid of the astonishment that confession had sent him into, without knowing how to take it in. A voice inside urged him to lean in, closer, closer, until he was almost touching Hermione's mouth. He only needed a sign, a single sign, to make everything make sense again.

"I love you, Ron."

And all of a sudden he was kissing her like he had never kissed anyone before, like all first kisses should be – smooth and warm, as sweet as chocolate, passion flavored, slow and nevertheless bold.

They had that night, and all the nights of the rest of their lives, to love each other. They weren't going to allow anybody to come between them, not even Voldemort.

It was love that was going to help them win that war, Ron thought again, leaning in and taking possession of those lips that invited him with a smile.

_Everything's changed, we never knew  
How did I fall in love with you? _


End file.
